The invention relates to a commissioning installation for the automatic, computer-controlled supply of items, e.g. tobacco products, from a storage region to a transfer station in accordance with commissioning orders.
Computer-controlled automatic commissioning installations are, e.g., known from AT 391 671 B (which corresponds to DE 32 13 119 A and to GB 21 18 156 A, respectively), but also from DE 22 26 769 A or from DE 27 36 197 A, DE 84 32 067 U or from FR 21 85 557 A, where, under the control of a computer and depending on the order to be commissioned, items are ejected from storage compartments arranged like shelves and containing the articles or items to be commissioned onto a conveyor belt passing them: the conveyor belt in turn supplies the commissioned items collected per commissioning order to a commissioning container; allocation between the commissioning container and the items is effected computer-controlled according to the commissioning order, and for this purpose the commissioning containers also have optically or magnetically detectable labels so as to ensure this allocation in the correct manner. The commissioning containers are transported on a transverse conveyor which is arranged at a somewhat lower level than the conveyor belt that passes the storage compartments, so that the latter can drop the items according to the respective commissioning order into the commissioning containers passing by on the transverse conveyor.
These known commissioning installations have proved suitable particularly in those cases in which a great plurality of items of rather small dimensions are to be manipulated, in which a commissioning order can be fulfilled without any problems with a commissioning container, in which comparatively little place is required per commissioning order on the conveyor belt, so that the individual commissioning orders can be handled successively and may lead to "heaps" of items on the conveyor belt, and in which also dispatch of the items commissioned by aid of the commissioning containers can be effected successively from one and the same site.
However, these known commissioning installations are not considered to be suitable if the items to be commissioned have greater dimensions, are present in a not too large plurality of different types, yet where there are optionally relatively high throughput rates per type of item. This is, e.g., so in case of tobacco products, such as, in particular, cigarette cartons. In such cases of commissioning, the known commissioning installations have proved to be poorly flexible and not sufficiently quick.